"What are you doing, Oliver? You've no business to look at my things. I never look at yours." He had not heard the door open, and Bella had crept up swiftly behind him; there was some anger, but there was far more fear, in her soft voice.
Germaine turned round and looked at his wife.
Bella had changed her dress, and she was now wearing a painted muslin gown, her slender waist girdled with a blue ribbon. She looked exquisitely lovely, and so young,—a girl, a young and innocent girl.
There fell a heavy hand on her rounded shoulder.
"Oliver!" she cried, "you're hurting me!"
He withdrew his hand—quickly.
"Bella," he said, "I only want to ask you one question—I know everything,"—and in answer to a strange look that came over her face he added hurriedly, "Never mind how I found out. I have found out, and now I only want to ask you one thing—I—I have a right to know who it is."
"Who it is?" she repeated. "I don't understand what you mean, Oliver? Who—what?" but as Bella Germaine asked the useless question she shrank back; for the first time in their joint lives she felt afraid of Oliver,—afraid, and intensely sorry for him.
A sob rose to her throat. What a shame it was! How on earth could he have found out? She had thought he would go on not knowing—for ever. That this should happen now, when she was so happy too,—when everything was so—so comfortable.
"Tell me—tell me at once, Bella," he said again, shaken almost out of his self-control by her pretended lack of understanding.